


the light was what i wanted (to be a tree drinking the rain)

by meritmut



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (and resultant existential crises), Force Visions, Gen, forests that probably want to eat you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 03:32:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5728099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meritmut/pseuds/meritmut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And the green, still, so much of it Rey felt her breath catch in her throat; felt her heart ache as though something had reached between her ribs and closed its hand there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the light was what i wanted (to be a tree drinking the rain)

**Author's Note:**

> to be held  
> by the light  
> was what I wanted,  
> to be a tree drinking the rain. — linda hogan

From above, the forest had seemed impenetrable, green above and green below and thick with life—everywhere, _life_ , the whole world singing with it. The lake, flashing in the afternoon sun like metal scrubbed to a shine by the scouring sands, silver and gold and trimmed in the reflected green of the verdant shores, and _alive,_ so alive it seemed to reach out, calling out to her in welcome and filling her heart with a longing she couldn't name.

She had thought of falling, and those soft-looking treetops catching her like arms, and of sinking between them until she drowned in the unlit space below.

With her feet on the ground and those same treetops curling together above her head like the tents at Niima market Rey could see the hidden world within the green—the columns that bore the canopy aloft, bent and tangling and old in ways that nothing on Jakku had ever seemed.

Old in different ways; old like living things with long memories, old like Maz who carried centuries in her gaze. Little survived that long in the desert, burnt away by the sun or scraped away by the wind if it wasn’t picked clean by scavengers first. Only the ships, and given enough time even they would vanish beneath the sand.

The shaded spaces between the trees, and the colours shifting within—that was age of a different sort, untouched and wild, fractured light and gathering shadow and the beckoning whisper of hidden things all around.

And the _green,_ still, so much of it Rey felt her breath catch in her throat, felt her heart ache as though something had reached between her ribs and closed its hand there. She turned again to the lake, to the wide ribbon of water that shone like beaten gold in the sun and the undulating swells of the far hills beyond, closing her eyes and drawing deep the clear air and feeling wonder anew at the taste of it. She’d never imagined that air could be _sweet_.

It is a world she could not have dreamt might exist, and she soaked it all up like sunlight.

 

-

Fleeing from Maz’s keen eyes, from the vision and the terrifying call of the thing in the chest that _tugs_ at something deep inside her _(lightsabre,_ Maz had called it, but somehow Rey had _known_ that, and flees from that awareness as much as anything), she runs with no thought to where she's running to—only that if she gets far enough into the forest, if she runs fast enough, maybe they won’t follow.

It shakes her, how utterly she longs to be alone then. She’s never _wanted_ for solitude before—not on Jakku, where through years of hunger it was just about the only thing she’d had in plenty—and the yearning to be back where she had been; to be Rey, lonely, but Rey, _certain,_ is new and overwhelming in its urgency.

 _Get away_ , she thinks, her feet moving faster than her brain. _Get out. You’re not supposed to be here._

She jogs along paths that seem to open up before her, heading deeper into the wood until the trees close in overhead and she wonders if she might just lose herself in the green of it after all.

(Half-wants to, with the part of her that drags its heels and bruises its fists against the weight of words like _destiny_ and _calling_ , the part that is almost as vocal as that which begs her to turn around and find passage back to Jakku before it's too late.)

_Before it’s too late—_

Maz, ancient and gentle, knowing things she oughtn’t, knowing things Rey can’t bear to admit she might know too—might have known all along, and never let herself believe.

_—they’re never coming back._

The breath drags in her throat, her eyes stinging. Her skin itches with the urge to move, to run until her muscles scream in protest and her heart burns and she can tell herself the ache in her chest is only from the lack of air in her lungs and not—and not fear.

Only from lack of air, and not the fear that Maz had been right, and Rey is more alone than she had ever thought.

(She always has been.)

 _Finn's gone. You_ are _alone._

Stumbling to a halt at last, the hush of the forest envelopes her like nightfall in the desert.

_(You always have been.)_

But the trees stir all around, and in the soft sigh of the wind she imagines she hears her name.

_Rey…_

_There’s no one there_ , she tells herself: _no one is coming for you. Learn that, now._

How peaceful it seems, here in the cradle of the wood. How easy it would be to simply find some shaded hollow, some knot of root and dirt, and tuck herself away beneath the earth where no one and nothing might find _her_ , until her lungs filled up with the sweetness of the loamy air and stilled the fire itching beneath her skin, and the forest grew over her, and she could sleep.

On Jakku there were nights, endless and cold, when the hunger had gnawed at her insides and Rey had thought to lay herself down where the shadows pooled darkest under the Hellhound and simply lie there as the desert shifted around her until inch by inch she disappeared, lost beneath the rising sand. It had seemed the easy way out, the simplest thing of all, and yet she had never found the courage.

There would be no more waiting, she thinks now, no more hunger, no more anything. Finn is gone, and Han won’t stick around much longer: what else is there, but returning to Jakku and the long vigil that now seems utterly without hope.

What else is there but the only life she knows?

Only—that's no longer true. There is more, and she knows it now too.

She could return. No one would stop her, if she insisted on it; she could go back to the Badlands and take up the life she’d left behind and maybe, maybe, it wouldn't be in vain, someone would come for her at last and the wait—the loneliness, the slow death that has crept on her in increments—wouldn’t have been for nothing. Maybe it wouldn’t be worthwhile, but it wouldn’t have been for _nothing_.

But she can never forget what she's seen and heard today, and if she goes back now she knows she would never be able to shake the doubt, the thought that she’d had her chance to escape that fate and had gone back to it not out of faith, but because she was afraid.

Rey shivers—here the shadows keep the warmth of the afternoon sun away, and the breeze now carries a chill up from the lake. She brings her arms up to wrap around her waist, drags them over her ribs to chivvy up some heat.

She feels keenly as if she stands upon a precipice, swaying slightly with the push of the air tilting her one way and then another, with no idea of where to turn.

She looks behind her, at the scavenger who had scratched a bare living out of the bones of scorched giants and who now seems to draw further and further away, gazing outward to an unknown horizon, waiting for someone who would never come.

She looks ahead, looks up, at all the galaxy unfurled around her—worlds and stars and systems arrayed in ancient order, glinting as if to beckon her on into the light.

 

-

She’s barely paused to catch her breath before BB-8’s chirruping call brings her back to herself, her protests dying on her lips as she hears beyond the trees the whine of oncoming fighters, and feels in the air like the looming of a summer storm the approach of a power that sends a new chill lancing through her gut. A power she knows, with a certainty that frightens her more than anything, that she could run for all the days of her life but never hide from.

_Finn—_

The blaster sits heavy at her belt, the press of the trees overhead seems too close now—too much between Rey and the silver sky above. The life of the forest hums in her ears, the distant roar of landing craft like thunder on the horizon.

BB-8 chirps.

She lets out a breath. Hovers on the edge.

Chooses.

The light is calling.

She starts to run.


End file.
